Murder Ballades I attended eighth blackbird’s performance of Bryce Dessner’s Murder Ballades few weeks ago, on Good Friday, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Matthew Duvall, eighth blackbird’s percussionist, had mentioned the performance on our Facebook page, and … Continue reading →
Ellen Greene An “Interlude” post, in our use, is not necessarily a connection between one piece of music and another, but an exploration of artistic work with close thematic engagement with murder ballads. It’s a step outside our “song of … Continue reading →
G.B. Grayson and Henry Whitter [This is the second post this week on “Tom Dooley.” The first post gives the basics of the underlying story.] Hardly a fiddler or a banjo picker in our county… “I’ll tell you all Verlee and I … Continue reading →
Christine Stulik (photo by Logan Futej) This is part two of our interview with Eileen, and the third post of the week. You can read the first part of the interview here, and read our introduction to their song “I’ll … Continue reading →
Becky Poole (photo by Logan Futej) Here is Part One of our interview with the Chicago-based duo, Eileen. Today, we meet the duo and dive more deeply into the song “I’ll Lay You Down,” which we introduced in the previous … Continue reading →
Eileen, the band (Christine Stulik [l] and Becky Poole [r], photo by Logan Futej) Prelude (or Preamble, take your pick) “The murders of men tend not to alarm us because, on a certain level, we perceive men as voluntarily accepting … Continue reading →
Tim Eriksen – from his Facebook fan page Our initial post this week took up the first of our two goals; to look more closely at Tim Eriksen‘s work and place it in the context of how we experience murder … Continue reading →
Arthel Lane “Doc” Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) If there are patron saints for this blog, Doc Watson is one of them, at least for me. With apologies to my dad, who was the acoustic guitar player with … Continue reading →
As Ken commented, the role of the natural world is a significant element in “Young Hunting/Henry Lee.” Nick Cave may have removed the dialogue between the woman and the bird, but his original chorus uses the howling wind and the … Continue reading →
View From Max Patch, North Carolina – by Jeff Pitman (Prints available here) Ken’s post about Omie’s surviving children gave rise to something in me that popped out as this little poem. Nothing about what they must have gone through made … Continue reading →
